War

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE GREEN LADY

LADY D’ARBANVILLE

THE FIRST MANDINGO WAR: 1883

SUMMERTIME

VUKOVAR’S GHOSTS

SLEEPING MOLOCH

SPECTRAL PERFUME

HUSH

NIGHT OF TEARS

IRAQI SUNSET

GEORGE TECUMSEH SHERMAN’S GHOSTS

THE BLACK SENTRY

ALICE IN HELL

WHITE SIEGE

THE SOUTHERN LADY

MISS SAIGON

TEN TO ONE

THE GHOSTS OF CULLODEN: 1746

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

THE LONG WALK TO HELL

ONE NIGHT STAND

THE CEMETERY WAR: BOOT HILL

POP 9/11

DRUG WARS: FOUR POEMS

BLACK RAY

CHOCOLATES FOR TWINS

HOLY DIVER

THE CASTRATO’S PARADE

YBYI 21

War, n. A by-product of peace

—Ambrose Bierce

THE GREEN LADY

by Alessandro Manzetti and Marge Simon

In this forever jungle; death hangs

almost palpable in the humidity.

Never mind the napalm—

if you don’t get bitten by snakes,

it’ll be one of their goddam insects you can’t see,

like the one that got the kid from Kansas,

bloodsucker’s poison went straight to his heart.

We’ve got smokes, we’ve got weed

and some other stuff, but no acid, man,

this surreal hell is on the US army.

Twilight’s the worst—there comes

a silence terrible and incomplete,

when your piss freezes

in nighty-five degrees.

Snipers in the bushes,

you can’t see them, but you know

someone’s going to take a hit—

you pray it won’t be you.

Finally morning comes,

time to move out, Sarge’s order,

so we do, each on our own weird trip, man—

a Ulysses patrol and one Siren,

I guess make that my Siren.

Now I see you, now I don’t

but I know you’re following me,

I hear your feet stepping on branches,

the click of your pointy rice-grain teeth,

your voice inside my helmet,

a Harpy’s song, like the sea in a shell.

Through a glimpse of multi-foliage I see

your smooth green thighs opening slowly,

a purple vanda orchid blooming, shaking its petals,

its stamen beckoning like a lover’s tongue,

but you disappear again.

Now I see you, now I don’t,

but I know you’re making yourself beautiful,

combing your vine green hair,

while we sink to the waist,

wade these black waters

holding our rifles over our heads

as if surrending to your beauty—

but wait, this is my fantasy alone,

each of us must have his own.

Now I see you, now I don’t.

Nightfall, we’re still on the move,

and as some beguiled and crazy Wise Man,

I see between the heads of the trees

your dazzling napalm star.

Maybe you’re back in your Mekong

fishing for dead bodies floating,

going through their pockets,

scattering black-and-white photos to the wind,

kissing Viet Kong soldiers one by one

as they glide through the mangroves.

Many linger in your sultry uterus

absorbed into your verdant hell,

while the helicopters of the living

slice the clouds, searching casualites,

all for nothing.

LADY D’ARBANVILLE

by Alessandro Manzetti and Marge Simon

Paris June 14, 1940

She enters his room,

slender legs encased in silky net,

small flowers caught in webbed designs,

stockings most women would sell their bodies for,

but she is not most women.

A single diamond on a chain around her throat,

faux gems woven in her hair, a shade of blonde

that has to be real as her gray eyes,

the color of ash on war torn ruins.

My Lady D’Arbanville, why do you sleep so still?

I’ll wake you when the tanks move further on,

when the blasts and the bleat of shots dies down

and the moon is low in the western sky.

You think you’ve taken Paris,

but I assure you we’re not done.

Das Fuhrer is a monster, soldier